VirtualDub MSU Smart Deblocking Filter

Algorithm: Dr. Dmitriy Vatolin, Anton Obuhov, Sergey Grishin

Implementation: Anton Obuhov

About

Filter is intended for recovering quality of video ripped from DVD (for
example, when it contains 4 hours of video data), VideoCD, shot on
cameraphone or after decompressing by DivX, XviD, H.26x (H.261, H.263,
H.264). It performs the accurate blockiness artifact removal, which
appears as the grid of squares laid over the video.

Filter automatically determines the blockiness’ strength on the frame
and in the concrete part of it, the processed video contains maximum
details from the original video. The blockiness criterions guarantee the
accurate work of every filter component in both hard and soft blockiness
cases. Thus, filter will process marginally when on scenes with slow
motion, while it will smooth very hard in the case of fast motion in the
same film.

The main advantages of the filter are:

The processing raises the PSNR quality metric of processed video in
comparison with the original video

Simple and convenient user interface with the on-the-fly filter
processing results in the Preview window

The full change list can be found in the “Change log” section.

Settings

Filter's interface

Filter’s interface allows to adjust the main parameters of processing.Tip: The “Preview” button allows to instantly observe the results of
filter settings modification.Tip: You can speed up the processing by unchecking some options.

Use block preprocessor

Enables block preprocessing. You can see the example of degraded movie
with a lot of blockiness, deblocked with preprocessing and without it:

Decompressed frame

Without block preprocessing

With block preprocessing

Preprocess unaligned

In case of slow motion unaligned blockiness may appear. Such blockiness
is the problem for the most of deblocking techniques. If the option
“Preprocess unaligned” is checked, the filter searches areas with
unaligned blockiness and processes them. There are some examples
below:

Decompressed frame

Without unaligned
blockiness processing

With unaligned
blockiness processing

Preprocess chroma

Enables preprocessing of color planes.

Decompressed frame

Without chroma preprocessing

With chroma preprocessing

Process chroma

Enables processing of color planes.

Decompressed frame

Without chroma processing

With chroma processing

Using AviSynth

Filter supports Job Control, and it can be used from AviSynth.
Example: